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Presentation

USA Compression Partners, LP misses on earnings expectations. Reported EPS is $0.27 EPS, expectations were $0.3542.

Operator: Good morning. Welcome to USA Compression Partners, LP First Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. During today’s call, all parties will be in a listen-only mode. At the conclusion of management’s prepared remarks, the call will be open for a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, please press 1 on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press 1 again. Thank you. And this conference is being recorded today, 05/05/2026. I would now like to turn the call over to Clint Green, President and CEO. You may begin.

Clint Green: Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. With me today is Christopher M. Paulsen, Senior Vice President and CFO; Christopher Wauson, Senior Vice President and COO; and other members of our leadership team. This morning, we released our operational and financial results for the quarter ending 03/31/2026. Today’s call will contain forward-looking statements based on our current beliefs and certain non-GAAP measures. Please refer to our earnings release and SEC filings for reconciliation and definitions of non-GAAP measures and related risk factors. As we discuss performance, please note that the JW acquisition closed on January 12, and therefore, Q1 earnings exclude the impact of revenues and expenses for JW Power for the first eleven days of the quarter.

Before we get into the quarter, I want to take a moment to recognize our team on safety. Our people go to work in the field every day, working around complex equipment, driving millions of miles a month, and the way they return to their family matters more than any financial metric we report. In 2025, our combined TRIR finished at 0.39, a 50% reduction from 2024 and well below the BLS industry average of 0.70, a benchmark we have now beaten for twelve consecutive years. We are proud of these results, and we remain committed to continuous improvement. Moving to the quarter, which included two integrations that established upward momentum for the company. First, we kicked off the integration of JW Power at a time when horsepower lead times continued to extend.

Customer discussions commenced immediately upon closing, starting the process of onboarding new customers to the USA Compression Partners, LP platform. As of early March, we have integrated the combined operations organization and established a new reporting structure. Second, on February 1, our integration of legacy USA Compression data into a new ERP system was completed. Our respective integration teams worked long hours to enable a smooth transition of both, and I cannot be more appreciative of their efforts. Throughout it all, we have maintained our operational momentum while delivering DCF and leverage metrics that show meaningful year-over-year improvement to our unitholders. The company is now broadly diversified across every major basin, horsepower class, and customer type.

In the last few months, we have contracted over 90% of our 2026 horsepower, which will more than double the new horsepower deployed in 2025. Additionally, we have continued the momentum in our small horsepower class with utilization up nearly 10% year over year. The introduction of JW Power’s manufacturing capabilities is enabling us to manage a dynamic compression market differently than in the past. Certain new engine lead times have recently tripled from 50 weeks to approximately 150 weeks. And while historically we might hesitate to commit to the full horsepower cost that far in advance, we are now able to directly acquire highly marketable engines with optionality to package for our own internal contract compression needs or future resale to third parties.

Engine costs represent approximately 25% to 40% of the total skid cost, with just a fraction of that cost provided as a deposit. In the event of an unexpected contract compression market shift over the next several years, we believe we could also divest those engines for other use cases, further reducing any unlikely downside exposure. Additionally, the diversity of our manufactured compression products, including mid-sized large horsepower, electric, and high-pressure gas lift, supports more competitive pricing for our customers while enabling us to adapt to the ever-changing marketplace. So far, the oil-directed rig count remains flat this year, but producers are showing more optimism looking out over a twelve-month horizon than we have seen for some time, reflecting a much improved commodity backdrop.

The twelve-month oil strip has significantly lagged physical spot prices and arguably is underpriced for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, much less a long-term conflict. We believe spot natural gas prices do not reflect the LNG risk associated with the Strait of Hormuz. Finally, 2026. I will now turn the call over to Christopher Wauson, our Chief Operating Officer, who will provide additional insights to our current operations and our out-year growth plan.

Christopher Wauson: Thanks, Clint. As of today, the operations and commercial organization have been integrated with both JW employees and legacy USA employees under new reporting structures consistent with a best-in-class approach, the longer-term result will be streamlined route optimization, customer contracts, vendors, inventory, safety protocols, and systems. As discussed in the prior quarter, we expect $10 million to $20 million of annual run-rate synergies by year-end 2027, and we are still tracking towards those estimates. The current new compression lead times have presented a new challenge for near-term business continuity and long-term planning for both contract compression and manufacturing. As a result, we have already placed orders for engines and package components for 2027 and engines for 2028 and a portion of 2029.

Package component lead times remain well inside of engine lead times, but we will continue to monitor and place these orders when needed. These advanced planning efforts should enable new contract compression growth to stay largely consistent with 2026, in excess of 100 thousand horsepower each year. As far as our manufacturing book is concerned, we have some specialty horsepower slated for resale, but the vast majority is expected to go into our fleet. Our 2028 orders are nearly entirely weighted to large 3,600 series engines, which are the most desired by our compression customers while also having substantial optionality for sale should the market shift. We continue to have robust conversations across our diverse customer portfolio and, as Clint mentioned, we have contracted more than 90% of nearly 110 thousand new horsepower expected to be added to the fleet in 2026 and are presently in the middle of multiyear strategic planning discussions with some of our strongest customers to shore up our 2027 book.

Notably, we experienced lower churn rates than expected in Q1, which is a reflection of the tightness in the current market. This backdrop, coupled with the idle units acquired from JW, positions us for outside horsepower growth in the back half of the year and into early 2027. Finally, while oil prices have moved up significantly in the last month, we are focused on minimizing cost increases tied to lubricants. If oil prices were to remain at current levels, we would expect much of that increase to show up in the second half of the year as our lubricant contracts renew. I will now turn the call over to Christopher M. Paulsen to discuss our financial results in detail.

Christopher M. Paulsen: Thanks, Chris. For basis of comparison, our quarter and year-ago financials exclude the benefit of JW that closed on January 12. For Q1 2026, our income statement reflects the results of JW’s contributions for 79 days in the quarter, and therefore our non-GAAP financial numbers, including EBITDA and DCF, reflect the same. By contrast, our non-GAAP operating metrics tied to horsepower, including utilization, average revenue per horsepower per month, and average active horsepower, are calculated based on month-end and therefore fully reflect JW’s horsepower contribution for the quarter. As we highlighted in our December 1 deal announcement, while JW provides meaningful near-term accretion and immediate deleveraging, the company in aggregate also has lower gross margin than our legacy asset base, in part due to the manufacturing and AMS operations that contributed approximately 10% of legacy EBITDA.

Turning the page to Q1 results, we increased pricing to an all-time high averaging $22.73 per horsepower, a 5% increase in sequential quarters and an 8% increase compared to a year ago. Average active horsepower ended at 4.438 million. Our first quarter adjusted gross margins came in at 64.4%. Regarding the consolidated financial results, our first quarter 2026 net income was $38.3 million, operating income was $91.4 million, net cash provided by operating activities was $86.1 million, and cash interest expense, net, was $47.1 million. Our leverage ratio at the end of the fourth quarter was 3.74 times. Turning to operational results, our total fleet horsepower at the end of the quarter was approximately 4.931 million horsepower, adding approximately 1.037 million horsepower as compared to the prior quarter, largely tied to the JW acquisition.

Our average utilization for the first quarter was 91.9%, a decrease compared to the prior quarter after incorporating JW. First quarter 2026 expansion capital expenditures were $26.4 million and our maintenance capital expenditures were $9.2 million. Expansion capital spending in Q1 primarily consisted of new units, while maintenance capital activity was deferred for a few weeks in February due to the implementation of SAP on February 1. For the remainder of the year, most growth capital will be focused on new horsepower and reconfiguration, while maintenance capital will normalize towards our full-year projections. We continue to maintain our full-year adjusted EBITDA range of $770 million to $800 million, distributable cash flow range of $480 million to $510 million, maintenance capital range of $60 million to $70 million, and expansion capital range of $230 million to $250 million.

As Christopher Wauson noted, we are nearly fully contracted for 2026 and are placing advanced orders to maintain full utilization of our manufacturing complex for several years. As stated in February, our near-term target is to maintain a 3.75 times debt to EBITDA, and we made significant progress towards this goal in Q1. While we hit this target for the quarter, we anticipate it will tick higher in Q2 as we take delivery of new horsepower, then trend back lower by year-end. Energy high-yield markets remained open and very resilient throughout the Iran conflict. Our improved leverage metrics put the company in a strong position to access capital markets later this year to the extent we want to provide more consistency in our debt tranche sizing and duration.

This quarter was a whirlwind of activity for our operations and finance teams as we implement new systems with new assets and new faces. The execution was nothing short of exceptional as we laid the foundation for more acquisition opportunities to come. We will stay disciplined and evaluate opportunities that fit with our financial goals and core competencies. In the near term, our business will be improved through a gross margin push, working to improve structural cost and the efficiency of the JW organization in the face of an inflationary oil environment. And with that, I will turn the call back to Clint for concluding remarks.

Clint Green: Thanks, Chris. This business demands that we stay close to our customers every single day, understanding their needs, anticipating where they are headed, and making sure we are ready when they call. The discipline does not change with the commodity cycle. What is changing is the opportunity in front of us. The demand for natural gas, both to move it and to power the infrastructure around it, continues to grow, and we feel very good about our position in that story. The relationships we have built with our suppliers combined with our manufacturing capabilities give us a real advantage in an environment where equipment lead times remain extended. We intend to use that advantage. We are bullish on contract compression overall, and I am excited about where we are headed. We will now open the call for questions.

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Operator: Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. If you have dialed in and would like to ask a question, please press 1 on your telephone keypad to raise your hand and join the queue. If you would like to withdraw your question, simply press 1 again. Your first question comes from the line of Nate Pendleton with Texas Capital. Please go ahead.

Nate Pendleton: Good morning, and congrats on the record results. So you had a really strong quarter across the board. Can you talk for a moment how this compared to your internal expectations following the JW integration? And then maybe your decision to keep the guidance the same here in lieu of those results.

Clint Green: Yeah, Nate. Thank you for that. I mean, I feel like we are in line with where we thought we would be as we put this model together late last year and decided to move forward with the acquisition. We have already worked through some of the operational changes in the structure. We are working hard on our routing and ways to save going forward. But overall, we are really happy with where we are at in the process and excited about where we are headed by year-end and then through the future.

Nate Pendleton: Got it. Thanks, Clint. And this is my follow-up maybe for Christopher M. Paulsen. I believe last call, you talked about looking for a distribution coverage expanding beyond the 1.6 times marker as sparking some conversations. With coverage now over 1.7 times, can you talk about how you weigh adding to an already strong distribution versus other uses of capital?

Christopher M. Paulsen: Sure, Nate. Just before that, just to add a little bit to Clint’s comments as it relates to the JW transaction as well. I think we mentioned this before, but we have been generally very pleased with the sophistication of their operations. As we start to embark upon another SAP implementation for their operations in particular, we are seeing some things that we want to adopt in our own, which is fantastic and which is probably expected from a company that has been doing it for 60 years. So there are areas of manufacturing that are done exceptionally well, areas as it relates to customer interaction and outreach that have been done exceptionally well, the retail side of the business. So I will just point to that as well.

But as it relates to your distribution question, we were pleased to see that number tick up to 1.72 times. Part of that relates to the fact that we had a bit of a partial quarter. We ultimately had lower maintenance expenditures. That was due to the SAP implementation itself. We did a couple weeks of paper stacking as it relates to the transition. We really had kind of a quiet period for about a week and a half where we told our folks to limit their maintenance expenditures, and so as a result, our maintenance expenditures were down, and therefore, DCF ticked up. Now that being said, we also did not account for the DCF over those eleven days while fully accounting for maintenance capital. So I think net-net, we feel really good about setting up for a durable and really a disciplined approach to distribution over time and our distribution policy.

We want to see something sustained for a period of time and continue to hit our financial metrics in terms of leverage, but also continue to see and repeat these types of numbers before I think we would begin to approach the conversation about any change in distribution policy.

Nate Pendleton: Understood. I really appreciate all the detail. Congrats again.

Clint Green: Thanks, Nate.

Operator: The next question comes from the line of James Rollyson with Raymond James. Please go ahead.

James Rollyson: Hey, good morning, gentlemen. Clint, you talked about lead times stretching out again. It is pretty remarkable to see how that has spread to numbers we have never seen before, and it seems you are pretty well ahead of the game by placing orders for engines out multiple years. I am curious how you are seeing your customers and maybe even competitors in terms of how they are set for planning out this far in advance. Because it was not long ago that customers were caught by surprise when, a couple years ago, lead times were beyond a year, and now we are almost three years. So I am just curious how you think the customer base and the industry is set for planning on these extended time horizons.

Clint Green: Yeah. It was a little bit of a surprise at one point with the lead times. We were running around 55 to 70 weeks just depending on the day, and then overnight, Cat went to 100 weeks or 108 weeks, and that is when we got in gear pretty quickly to try and figure out how we were going to cover that. So we got creative for 2027 and were able to pull some stuff in, and then for 2028 we decided to go ahead and make that engine order. The customers, I think they are dealing with it just like we are. Thankfully, we are able to provide for our customers with our plans for the future. And competition, I have not really heard what they are doing on any front. I am sure they are trying to figure it out just like we are. I think our capital program has gone from a one-year program to probably a three-year outlook and taking pieces of it at a time as we have to order engines.

Now, a lot of it is driven by the generator orders, because you see that Ariel and cooler manufacturers, those lead times are still at 25 to 30 weeks. They are not stretched way out. So I think everybody is taking it in stride, and we are trying to make sure our customers are taken care of.

James Rollyson: Yeah, well, kudos for being ahead of the game. Then I guess there is a follow-up. Maybe you guys can talk about OpEx, or mainly higher oil prices that will drive lube oil and fuel costs up to some extent in the second half if oil prices stay up here. Curious how you think about your ability to pass that on given how tight the market is and maybe the lag effect of being able to price that on. Obviously, you did not change your guidance, so it is not impacting your margins at this point, but just curious how you are all thinking about it.

Christopher Wauson: Yeah. No. Thanks for that. One thing with inflation, with oil prices, all of our costs are going up. So we are continuing to drive efficiencies in the organization to protect that margin. And as contracts expire and renewals come up, we do plan to address that accordingly. So it is kind of twofold. We are going to manage it as best we can and continue to drive for efficiencies. That is the biggest win here.

James Rollyson: Appreciate the color, guys. Thanks.

Operator: The next question comes from the line of Elias Max Jossen with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.

Elias Max Jossen: Hey. Good morning. Just wanted to start on the outlook for new unit procurement. It seems like you have got orders placed for the next several years. So how should we think about the cadence of unit additions over these next couple of years? I know some of your peers have given an outlook through the decade, but just curious how we should think about new units in the fleet. Thanks.

Christopher Wauson: One thing we are trying to do is stick to that 100 thousand-ish horsepower of growth year over year, maybe even up to 125 thousand, just depends on how things shake out. But that is the beauty of our manufacturing business. We can control that a whole lot better now. It is a lot more optionality. It enables us to really make those decisions and do what is best for our customers and the organization.

Clint Green: Yeah. Hey. This is Clint. I want to add on that. I talked about a three-year capital program, and we are really only talking about the cost of the engine for that three years. We have the engines ordered, but we will wait and monitor lead times on compressors and coolers, and that way, we can order those, you know, within 40 weeks or something like that to have them in time for the engines to arrive. So I want to make sure everybody understands we are not committed to the full compressor cost going out three years. It is just a deposit on the engine so far.

Elias Max Jossen: Got it. That is a helpful clarification. And then maybe shifting over to some of the stronger pricing we saw this quarter as well as the utilization noise from the JW integration. Can you help frame run-rate levels on both of those metrics going forward? Should we expect continued pricing growth, and how will fleet utilization, you think, ultimately shake out once you are fully integrated? Thanks.

Christopher M. Paulsen: Hey, Eli. So as it relates to the first part of that question, on the utilization front, the utilization is reflective of the fact that we brought in over a million horsepower and essentially got that optionality, I think, on the cheap. As we mentioned in our acquisition call, we noted that we felt like there were 900 thousand-plus readily deployable. We have taken the initial pass through that fleet, and that is why you see the over a million horsepower within our total count. We will continue to review that and look more deeply into that total capacity. And part of that will be as we continue to increase orders, increase our small horsepower utilization—as we noted, we increased it over 10% year over year—we see that potential to improve from here.

Those are some of those units that we will evaluate. So presently, the horsepower utilization that you see, I think, is a baseline for new run-rate. I think it can only improve from here, both in terms of small horsepower and also as we dig deeper into some of that capacity. We may ultimately decide that that capacity is no longer deployable within our operations but can be used on other operations elsewhere. As it relates to the revenue side of the question, the revenue has continued to improve as we know—5% to 8% in terms of revenue relative improvement. We see that continuing to improve consistent with the way in which we have approached it in the past. As we see cost increase, many of our contracts, and I should say most, are CPI-U based.

We have seen CPI-U tick up almost 100 bps from not very long ago. So one, we will have the CPI-U support as it relates to revenue. But two, we are partnering with our upstream and midstream companies. We always do just that. They understand through any cycle that there is a give and take, and we recognize that too and have partnered as it relates to the business and would anticipate that as our costs increase, there will be some relative cost increase on the other side of that. We just need to have constructive conversations. And that is a big part of having great relationships within the business and being around since ’98 and having nearly two decades of relationships with our top 10 customers.

Elias Max Jossen: Got it. Super helpful. Leave it there. Thanks.

Operator: And once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press the star 1 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from the line of Douglas Irwin with Citi. Please go ahead.

Douglas Irwin: Hey, team. Thanks for the question. Maybe one on JW Power here. It sounds like the manufacturing business is already maybe changing the way you approach your growth backlog a little bit. Just curious, now that you have had a bit more time with these assets under your belt, if there may have been any other opportunities or surprises you have been able to uncover with regard to synergy opportunities that maybe you did not fully appreciate beforehand?

Clint Green: Yeah. This is Clint, Doug. Thanks for your question. I mean, we fully expect to—or we hope to—find some diamonds in the rough that we were not expecting. Definitely, the manufacturing business, the capacity there is between 100 thousand and 125 thousand horsepower in that facility, which is kind of what we expect to grow or plan to grow—maybe a little north of that—over the next few years. So we feel like that will give us a lot of flexibility. The operations side of it—being in every basin now and having facilities that are across the road from each other in several spots—there may be some synergy opportunities there. We think there is more to come. We are just trying to dig through all the opportunities and figure out which ones really come to life.

Douglas Irwin: Got it. That makes sense. And then maybe just a higher-level one as a follow-up. Looking at Slide 4 here in your slide deck, you call out a need for over 10 million incremental horsepower by 2030, which is obviously a huge number. Just curious what you see as your role in meeting that demand moving forward. Do you potentially see a need to lean even further into growth relative to what you already messaged here over the next couple years? And if you can, maybe talk about what basins on that map you see yourselves as having the biggest advantage in?

Christopher M. Paulsen: Yeah. This is Chris. Great question. As it relates to that, part of it is what is the right forecast? We are always actively reviewing the overall forecast for natural gas, understanding the LNG markets and data center markets—they are exceptionally fluid, as you well know. Ultimately, we feel really good about the forecast that was put forth on that particular slide and the forecast as it relates to those basins. It is all related to the relative natural gas price as well. Ultimately, the Rockies, for instance, is an area that we would say at a higher gas price would probably be in a flattish range, whereas I think the rest of those areas are well established in terms of their growth trajectories at current pricing, if not above.

As we think about our place in this trajectory, we want to be in a position to maintain our current standing and our current market share. We know that in areas like the Northeast, we have an outsized market share, and it is an area that has returned to growth. There are really fundamentally sound measures that support that 5 to 7 Bcf. I think if we see coal-to-gas switching, that number increases from here. That is really based on announced projects, and there is still probably more to come there. As it relates to the Gulf Coast and the Permian that are going to make up more than half of that, we are well situated there. We are a big player in the Permian. We are a huge player in the Gulf Coast and Mid-Con, and we want to maintain our market share, if not grow it, in those respective areas as well.

Douglas Irwin: Awesome. Thanks for the time.

Clint Green: Thank you.

Operator: And the next question comes from the line of Analyst with Stifel. Please go ahead.

Analyst: Thank you. I just wanted to follow up on that last question. Listening to the Energy Transfer call, they were talking about the U.S. becoming a preferred supplier to the global outlook when everything settles out from the war. As you think about that, should we expect to see an acceleration of your business?

Clint Green: We fully expect so. This is Clint. If you look at the market, there is 15% to 20% of the LNG capacity effectively locked in because of the Strait of Hormuz right now. JKM prices yesterday were at $16, and U.S. gas prices are at $2.80 to $3. If you back up to January and February of this year, JKM was $9 to $10 and U.S. Henry Hub pricing was $2.80 to $3.20. So even though JKM has gone up, we have not seen the pricing increase here in the U.S. Part of that is takeaway capacity. By the end of the year, we are going to have a lot more capacity coming out of the Permian. There are several LNG facilities either expanding now or under construction. If you look at the U.S. Department of Energy’s website, they show five of those facilities will be online within the next 24 months.

With all that said, if gas takeaway is able to get out of the Permian and get to the facilities on the Gulf Coast, and is able to get on boats and go across the ocean, the demand for U.S. natural gas is going to go up. We could not be more excited about the natural gas story right now, whether it is dry basins or the Permian or wherever. Any of that growth, with us being in all the basins, means that we have to grow with it. So we are super excited about the prospects of the future here.

Analyst: Appreciate that. And then let me ask you about the extended lead times. When you look at the 3,600s and you are talking, I believe, 2.5 thousand horsepower and up, is that all being driven by AI backup power or primary power, and so you are competing against that? Is that what is really taking the lead times up, or is it something else?

Clint Green: Well, it is both. It is natural gas-driven engines that are generators that are driving that market up significantly. A lot of people are ordering generation. Then you have folks ordering natural gas compression engines to supply the gas to the generators. Cat really does not have big plans to expand their manufacturing facility in the near future for the 3,600 series, which is the 4.5 thousand up to 5 thousand horsepower. Those are the drivers behind it. I think we are to the point now where we are starting to look at other engine manufacturers’ options, whether it is domestic or international, because I believe there is a hole that we have got to start filling in the future if this is going to continue out.

Operator: Thank you. And there are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn it back to Clint Green for closing remarks.

Clint Green: Thank you all for joining our call today. As always, we are deeply appreciative of our employees and the stakeholders that enable us to conduct our business every day. With that, we want you all to have a great day. Thank you for joining, and see you next time.

Operator: Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today’s conference call. You may now disconnect.

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